1906] 
GIRAULT—THE BEDBUG 
45 
several years and then, in the year 1900, summarized, together witli a critical 
and historical study of the whole question. The possibility of the transmission 
of relapsing fever by bedbugs was considered by a Dr. Tictin, with negative 
e.xperiinents, while a Japanese writer, M. Vamagiwa, stated definitely that out of 
a large number of clinic cases of bubonic plague, one case was caused by the 
bite of a bedbug. 
In the following year, 189S, Dr. Charles F. Craig, then .\cting .Assistant 
Surgeon, U. S. Army, quoted the cases of Tictin and Moran, and called attention 
to the lack of knowletlge of the question involved. K.xperiinents on the trans- 
mission of anthrax by bedbugs were recorded by M. Joly, with negative results 
while one of his fellow-countrymen, Dr. Simond of the Pasteur Institute, stated 
in a lengthy article on bubonic plague, that the Hea and the bedbug were the two 
“parasites”, a priori, which were able to assume a rule in the transmission of 
that dangerous disease. He thought it probable that the bedbug intervened in 
the transmission of that disease from man to man. 
During 1899, MM. Calmette and Salembeni, in the annals of the Pasteur 
Institute, wrote of a ca,se of bubonic plague in which the beilbug’s bite formeil a 
starting point of the disease. During the same year. Dr. Carmichael, of the H. 
S. Marine-Hospital Service, said, — “It is suspected that certain insects play a 
part in the transmission of leprosy, the common housefly, mostjuito, and bedbug 
being the principal carriers of infection.” In 1899, Dr. Coplin, of the Jef- 
ferson Medical College, Pennsylvania, proved that pure cultures coukl be inocu- 
lated from infected bugs ; the infections were those of typhoid fever. .Mter dis- 
cussing the parts played by household insects in spreading certain diseases, he 
concludes by saying, “The danger from the bedbug and roach would probably be 
great in diphtheria and all would share in the possible dissemination of tubercu- 
losis, anthrax, and similar bacterial diseases.” Put conclusions opposite to this 
were reached by Muhling in a paper published at Jena about the same time. 
He concluded that of themselves, bedbugs could not carry contagions, but that 
their bites would naturally form a portc (Pentrcs for pathogenic bacteria. 
With the exception of minor articles, the only other inqrortant writing 
which has been published on bedbugs and their relations to human disea.ses is 
that of Dr. Nuttall, mentioned in foregoing. This was first published at Perlin, 
in 1899, and reprinted the following year in Jotui'n Hopkins Ilospila! Reports. 
(Nuttall, 1900.) It critically discussed all the experimental evidence then 
